SINCLAIR ZX81 HOME COMPUTER

The ZX81 was the first cheap, mass-marketed home computer selling 1.5 million units before it was discontinued in 1984. It was truly innovative, and allowed the general public to get their hands on something that was once only available to businesses and hobbyists with huge amounts of cash.

However, those who rushed out to buy a ZX80 will probably have been regretting the move after the release of the ZX81 (Timex Sinclair 1000 and 1500 in the U.S.). For a start it was half the price (£49.95 or £69.95 in kit form), it used just five chips (the ZX80 used 21) and it had a much better BASIC programming language.

As with virtually all other home computers around at the time, programs were loaded and saved via an external cassette recorder, which was the most popular and cheapest method in the early 80s - it wasn't always reliable! Floppy Disk drives were available to purchase as extras with other, more expensive computers such as the Atari 800, Commodore Vic 20 and IBM PC.

Although the ZX81 was by far the cheapest computer available at the time, it was also the least powerful. It had just 1kB of RAM, although this was expandable to 16kB. With a maximum resolution of just 64 x 44 characters and mono display, the IBM PC with its 640 x 200 res, 16 colour display and the Atari 800 with a 320 x 192 res, 256 colour display wiped the floor with it, but you had to be pretty well off to buy one of these!

An IBM PC would set you back $1265, an Atari 800 was $899.95 and a Commodore Vic-20 was $260. So at $99.95, the ZX81 was truly affordable and allowed more people than ever to join the home computing revolution.

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Scramble Game

This video clip originally showed scramble on a Timex Sinclair 1000 (the US version of the ZX81) which had music (not being produced by the computer as it had no sound chip) and had been added by the video uploader.

However, this video suddenly disappeared off Youtube, and I've now replaced it with an even better one above which features running commentary.

By the way, if you owned a ZX81 then you will know that you also had to purchase the 16Kb expansion pack to play games.